Dark Age Brilliance - Late Antique and Pre-Romanesque

Fly at c. 8.30am (British Airways) from London Heathrow to Bologna. Drive to Ravenna for the first of three nights.

Begin with an exploration of the fifth-century forms at the cathedral and Orthodox Baptistery, and the superlative sixth-century ivory throne of Maximian in the Museo Arcivescovile. In the afternoon study Arian Ravenna at the Arian Baptistery and Theodoric’s great Palatine church of S. Apollinare Nuovo. Investigate the fifth-century basilica design which provided Theodoric’s court with its most immediate models, and Galla Placidia’s splendid ex-voto basilica of S. Giovanni Evangelista.

In the morning see the outstanding National Museum, with excellent Byzantine ivory carvings. Travel by coach to Theodoric’s superb Mausoleum and to the ancient port of Classe for the great basilica of S. Apollinare. Private evening visit to the church of S. Vitale, the greatest sixth-century building of the West; the invention with which form, colour, space and narrative meaning are combined is breathtaking. The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is the earliest Christian structure in Europe to retain its mosaic decoration in its entirety.

Drive north to the Po delta. Pomposa is an important eighth-century Benedictine abbey, richly extended by Abbot Guido’s magnificent 11th-century porch and campanile. Lunch in Chioggia. The Roman road station at Concordia Sagittaria, whose modest mediaeval cathedral was built alongside a fourth-century basilica and martyrium, is splendidly revealed through archaeological excavation. Stay four nights in Cividale.

Although founded as Forum Julii in the first century BC, Cividale is best known to historians as the site of the earliest Longobard settlement in northern Italy, and most celebrated by art historians for the astonishing quality and quantity of the eighth-century work which has survived here. See the superb ‘Tempietto’ of Sta. Maria in Valle, Longobardic work in the cathedral museum and spectacular early mediaeval collections in the archaeological museum. The afternoon is free in Cividale.

Drive south, cross Slovenia and enter the part of Croatia formerly known as Istria. The sole object of the excursion is to visit Poreč (Parenzo), a longish journey justified by the existence of an unusually complete sixth-century cathedral complex: basilican church, baptistery and bishop’s palace. The church proper was built above an earlier basilica c. 540 by Bishop Euphrasius, whose complete episcopal throne is set within an apse which, for once, has retained its full complement of furnishings and fittings.

Aquileia was a major Roman city whose influential cathedral was complete by 319. Sections of walls and mosaic pavements were preserved within the present 11th-century cathedral, a rather wonderful survival. The Longobard sack of 568 resulted in the removal of the see to the more defensible position on the coast at Grado, whose two great sixth-century churches, Sta. Maria della Grazie and the cathedral, also have outstanding floor mosaics.

Drive to the Adriatic and take a water taxi to the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon, a major city while Venice was little more than a fishing village. Visit the largely 11th-century cathedral of Sta. Maria Assunta and adjacent Greek-cross reliquary church of Sta. Fosca. Continue to Venice Airport and fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 6.00pm.